Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Millie Shaw, asks, “As a public speaking teacher, I so deeply appreciate your well-crafted messages with a clear thesis and structure. Each podcast is a beautiful example of an engaging informative speech. How do you manage the gargantuan task of sifting through the available information and narrowing your focus to fit a roughly 10-minute episode? I find that this is often the biggest challenge for my students. Do you start with a really strong thesis and work from there? What advice would you give a novice speech builder on how to choose the best/most relevant info?”

First, Millie, let me say that I competed in academic speech and debate for years, and was also a coach for about ten years as well. I competed in Expemoranesou Speech in high school and was one spot away from making the final round at the national tournament.

My background in competitive speech was, far and away, the most important thing I’ve done in terms of my ability to do this podcast.

Most of what I do nowadays is pretty intuitive. I don’t start with a thesis so much as just something which is interesting. That has to be the kernel of any episode. There has to be an interesting story behind whatever the episode is about.

This podcast usually isn’t about crafting an argument or defending a thesis. My episodes are usually not trying to persuade anyone. I’m just trying to tell an interesting story about some person, place, or thing that most listeners might not be familiar with.

Filtering out the unnecessary information is more of an art than a science. I’m often trying to condense something very complex, something which someone probably wrote an entire book or did an entire doctoral dissertation about.

In trying to explain something in a short amount of time, the most important thing is that people walk away with the gist of the story. The thing you have to ask yourself is does this support the core of the story, or does it detract from the story.